Proposals related to 'fracking' bans and voter referendums among those that could target Michigan's 2014 ballot

Protestors against fracking at a Grand Rapids event in 2012.Chris Clark | MLive.com

LANSING, MI - It’s early in the process, but some Michigan activists are taking the first steps toward attempting to qualify statewide ballot proposals for the 2014 election.

Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers could hear about two developing efforts at a Friday meeting. One aims to widen the scope of state laws that Michigan voters can seek to overturn, and the other – listed as “tentative” on Friday’s agenda – would ban horizontal hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for gas and oil wells.

Six proposals made it to the statewide ballot last November. The “no” vote won in every case.

Many efforts to make the ballot fall short of qualification because they can’t gather enough signatures to put their proposals before voters.

The step sought by ballot committees on Friday is one of the easiest to accomplish. Supporters of the proposals are seeking to get the forms of their petitions approved, a step usually taken before voter signature collection kicks into high gear.

The group seeking to ban fracking appears to be planning an “initiative” petition. That would seek to spark a new state law and would require 258,088 valid signatures to make the ballot.

The other item on the Board of Canvassers agenda is from the Voters for Fair Use of Ballot Referendum. That plan aims to change the state constitution to give voters the option of repealing state laws even in cases where they include a spending appropriation.

Under the Michigan constitution, groups can seek to overturn a state law through a referendum process – as voters did with the state’s emergency manager law from 2011. But the power of referendum does not extend to laws making appropriations for state institutions or to meet deficiencies in state funds.

Some of the more recent laws with appropriations – making them referendum-proof – are Michigan’s right-to-work law and the state’s revised emergency manager law from 2012. Some critics have questioned whether lawmakers sometimes might include appropriations in controversial bills mainly so voters can't repeal them.

The proposal on Friday’s Board of Canvassers agenda would remove the prohibition on challenging laws that contain appropriations. The proposal appears to include language, however, that would protect the appropriation itself in the event a law were challenged.

Once the petition form is approved, supporters still would have to collect 322,609 valid voter signatures to make the ballot.

"I believe we'll have support," said Bill Lucas, a Ferndale resident listed as the Voters for Fair Use of Ballot Referendum treasurer.

Lucas said the issue first grabbed his attention when an appropriation was included in the 2011 measure repealing the state's item pricing law.